


What comes after

by Liffis



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Lots and lots of feels, Other, Temporary Character Death, Wanda centric for now, might turn into Hawksilver - not sure yet, okay so Pietro died but I am so fixing this, uh-oh prepare for Maximoff feels, whoa shit surprise angst with Clint - where did that come from
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 10:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4015882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liffis/pseuds/Liffis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pietro's gone - it has been five hours, the longest her brother had to spend utterly alone, and - and this time, Wanda can't even follow him. Her brother has gone somewhere where she is unable to follow him like she had always done up until now. </p><p>And when it has been fifty-seven hours, after that moment, when she sees him again. Not dead - but not alive, either. Something in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A few hours ago, I have seen "Age of Ultron", and DAMN IT ALL, I cursed about Pietro's death. Seriously, so unnecessary to kill him off - I have a major bone to pick about it, but if I picked it here, it would be longer than the actual chapter so I won't.  
> Anyways. Because we can't really trust movie makers to fix it the proper way, I decided to give it a try myself. Not sure how long this is going to be or what is going to happen, but I know I want to write about the twins, and maybe I'll even include some Hawksilver, because I love this pairing, even more after watching the movie.
> 
> [edit/27.05.] Couldn't resist writing about how unnecessary Pietro's death is - however, I don't know how to link this here, so may I recommend you visiting my other...well, not exactly story, but I reckon the title is self-explanatory: "Pietro Maximoff's death and other unnecessary things".

Seeing her brther lying motionlessly on the floor is more jarring than the actual – the actual moment itself. Then, it was – all. Ripping. In her mind. And she was alone, has been ever since, and she knew: Pietro is dead. She knows it with a rare security, because her mind is missing him, like a limb torn away and bleeding.  
But when she sees him, lying there, not moving at all, it hits her all at once: her brother is dead.  
It hurts, and she falls down next to him, her legs almost not carrying her to him, but this is where she is supposed to be: next to her brother, her big brother -  
Her Pietro who is now alone where she can't follow. It's the second time in their lives where she has left him really alone somewhere, utterly on his own, and the time before Pietro had to be alone for twelve minutes. Ever since, he had her, and she had him, her big brother. But now it's been five hours, and Wanda is still alone.

The first night she doesn't sleep, because she sits next to her brother and every time the first whisps of sleep catch her, she swears she sees Pietro twitch and she jolts awake –  
Her mind stays empty, and she doesn't dare touching Pietro, because it would make it all the more real, if she touched him and he was real, if this was really the flesh of her brother she'd touch, because it couldn't be her brother. Her brother who has been, ever since she could remember, on the move, running, running, jumping, always moving, never still, not even in sleep.  
He is now, and Wanda can't sleep.

The morning is crisp, and bitingly cold. Wanda holds her face towards the sun and there's something hot and wet curling in her stomach, but she is too tired to cry. It feels as if the world is weighing on her shoulders, on hers alone, from now on hers alone, because Pietro -  
But she swallows and stays where she is, because she won't leave him alone. She did it during the battle, and now her free, her brother, the quickest runner, he is lying still. He didn't even close his eyes, couldn't even close them, it was this fast.  
Her fingers shake when she gently closes them, but they won't budge. She can see her fingers mirrored in the dull blue, and his eyes, they are still open, staring upwards, unseeingly.  
No one hears her crying, nor do they see her body being wrecked by sobs.

In the end it is the Avenger she liked best, as much as she liked them, who finds her: the Archer. He is quiet, and looks as tired as she feels, hollow to the bone and far beyond.  
„He died for me.“, the man says, and sits down next to her. His eyes are trained on Pietro.  
„Directly in front of me. For me.“  
His regret is wafting up her mind, like mist, the taste of it, of burnt wood heavy in her mouth.  
„I'm sorry.“, he says, and it rings empty, but she hears how the shrill wrongness sounds inside him, too, and -  
„He's my brother.“, she says, and what more could she say? There are no words for it, none, not even in her mother tongue for how much she misses him, how she could have never, not in her whole life, have imagined how it would feel to not have him alive. Maybe not forever with her, she had imagined that aplenty in her worst nightmares: Pietro not being with her. But dead? No. It was impossible to imagine, because she had believed it would surely kill her alongside him. It is without words, and there are especially none in this weirdly flowing language that is so foreign in her mouth.  
She cannot explain this man how it is to know Pietro dead.

On the last rays of sunshine, Stark's men come. Wanda recognises their kind instantly: soldiers. Trained soldiers, with weapons, and they look at her like they expect her to lash out.  
There is red blurring her world, and something bubbles up within her, through all the empty numbness Pietro left behind -  
And she whips around and shrieks, screams, rages, because she trusted, and she spits it at the Archer, how she had trusted him she was an Avenger too, and her brother, her Pietro had trusted him too, and he had betrayed them all -  
She's too weak to stop them from shooting at her, and whatever they injected her with, it's too strong for her to fight against, not even with all her rage fuelling her. Her body is too weak to power her any longer and when she falls, she prays she'll fall deep enough to follow her brother, maybe that she'll fall into a corner of her mind where he hides, maybe both?  
Prayers whisper through her, and if she could, she would make everyone around her feel them too – that, or the emptiness that threatens to eat her whole.

When she wakes, it is suddenly – as is the knowledge something isn't right. Something is there, in her mind, where her brother was, and it feels like it, too, except it really doesn't.  
She is up in an instant. It's like she isn't alone, again, like Pietro is back, but it's not, at the same time. It is not her brother, it's different, yet it is just like her other part, her twin is back with her.  
„Hey, calm down – Wanda!“  
Commotions. People. Their words are useless sounds, and they drop away like rain from glass. They cannot make her pause, not even for one second, not when she is on her way to her brother.  
She gets faster, and her hands start shaking, because she is dimly aware she isn't running down towards the exits, towards where they – no, she is climbing stairs, more and more, higher, and then running towards long halls, her feet giving her away. Oh, Pietro would laugh at her, telling her to be quiet, shh, little sister, you sound like a hord of elks stampeding through the woods!  
There's this door, and she needs to get behind it, now, but she doesn't trust her powers – she'd probably rip this door apart into tiny little shards, and the next fifty doors on each side as well, and the floor too, just like the windows and the walls, she'd tear into it all and tear it all apart.  
Her fingers are now shaking so heavily it's a close-call miracle whoever is behind the door can hear her knocking.  
It is the archer, and he looks even worse than – when they picked her and Pietro up. More tired, like he, too, is carrying the world's weight on his shoulders.  
He just makes this quiet hitching noise and swallows, and then he steps back -  
The instant Wanda sees what's behind him, she screams, and around her, the doors get ripped from their hinges and the windows burst into shards, melting into the floor, burning hot steel refreezing into abstract shapes -  
Because there, in a tank, lies Pietro.


	2. And the storm rages on

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pietro is waking up - it goes worse than expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wow thanks for reading this, people! I didn't expect it, to be quite honest.  
> I hope you'll like this!

It is the Archer who shakes Wanda out of it, out of the screaming, the tearing, yet at the same time the roaring silence – he gently touches her shoulder, then leads her to him.  
Her brother who is still too quiet, lying motionlessly there – or, rather floating in the thick, greenish gel encompassing him. The glass he is behind is cold on Wanda's fingers, and still she can't feel him properly. Can't hear him either. She can't put her finger on it, but now that she is so close, it's as if Pietro is so far away in her mind, like some shadow that's screaming at her, just that she can't hear it.  
„How?“, she asks, her voice too quiet to carry far, but the Archer is directly next to her.  
„We're not sure. Not even Dr Cho“, and there he sighs, and something wells up inside him, too thick for Wanda to decipher, because a million things are tied to it and she's too tired to make sense of them. The English makes her mind and tongue hurt enough as it is.  
„It was a lucky guess this could save him.“  
She hears his doubts and fears as loud as if he screamed them in her face, the unspoken _Wanda, this might not save him, or might save something that is not yet fully your brother_ rings crystal clear. The Archer is looking at her, his face looking weary beyond years in the ghostish hues of the tank.  
„I do not care what this does, but I know it will be my brother. I can hear him.“, and she points to her head. Barely there, yes, but she would recognise her brother no matter what, and no one could have faked this, nor could they have reproduced this. It's too intricate, too much like Pietro, too much like what she has known even before she got her powers, because even before, she had a twin she knew.  
The Archer doesn't answer, just nods, then:  
„Do you want to stay here? Tony made you a thing.“, and he gestures to the side where a small bed is. More like a mattress and a lot of pillows and a blanket, but it's better than she had for the majority of her life, and Pietro is close-by. All will be well.  
Wordlessly, she stalks over and lies down, her gaze drawn back to the tank where her brother rests amidst this greenish glow.  
Sleep claims her fast this night, the tiresome days finally catching up with her.

 _It's green. And slow. No, static, that's what it is, not-moving-at-all. And a voice. Rough, a bit, but so tired. Dragging-on-but-barely._  
„I am sorry.“, the voice says, and it is – thick. Wet. Rain-inthevoicedrowningandnotmoving  
„I am so fucking sorry, shit, this shouldn't have happened, not to you – how old are you, anyways?“  
Old? And what? There was not-anything. More of that voice.  
„Why did you do it, I'm – not worth it, seriously. And I had made jokes about how I'd put arrows in you and how no one would miss you and -“  
Voicedrownedinsomething – oh.  
„And I regret it.“  
Now the voice is broken off, crumbled down – a bomb, there was something, a bomb and a house, and a small girl soundlessly sobbing and she was close and she needed protection, yes -  
„God I'm so sorry, and whenever I close my eyes, I see you dying and I can't stop it, can never stop it, and never understand: why did you do it? You didn't even know me, nor did you trust me, so why?“  
There's this picture flickering, a lanky boy curling around a shocked girl, curling up so much they almost disappeared behind ruins – and then: a man clutching a child, turning away to somewhere – this man looks different than the boy before, but their position is similar, the second man has something on his back, a weapon?  
And then: burning, searing pain, yes, burningthroughhim and it hurts, it hurts, it's fire, it hurts, much more than the experiments ---  
The experiments -  
The burninginjectionsfirefirefirefireinhisveinsandWanda'sscreaminggodWandaWandaWandawhatdidtheydotoyounoyoupromisedshewouldnotbehurt **WANDA**  
A scream -

It's like fire racing through her mind and Wanda screams, she can't do anything else, her body is paralysed with pain, and she wants to tear it all off, make the pain stop, but she can't because it's in her mind, Pietro, Pietro is screaming, he's in pain so she is as well, but he is in so much pain and it won't stop – it won't stop -  
She clutches her head and doesn't feel her nails biting into the skin, it is nothing compared to the gaping wound bleeding in her mind, the parts that were Pietro inside her head are shrieking in agony, and she can't do anything to help him, she doesn't dare venturing closer to him because she can't calm this, nothing can, she is one drop of water to a fire disintegrating a forest.  
And Pietro screams -  
She doesn't feel how she is falling unconscious, because she doesn't realise she is, the screaming doesn't stop, in any case it gets even louder, shriller, drenched with panic, because Pietro doesn't understand. He doesn't understand why he is still, and why it is all so different, and why he can't move and why he is in pain and why is he in pain, anyways?  
She slips away and hopes she won't take her brother with her. Pietro, she thinks, and tries to send him a gentle wisp of calmness. He rages on, discordantly, even more so now that she is slowly withdrawing – she is too deep to truly do anything about it, and with a detached interest she watches him, like she is drowning in the deep calm waves and the sea above her is raging a storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for the future chapters - I think I will write some major Pietro!feels. Like, the worst. Ahh.


	3. Trying to make amends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanda is not the only one waiting for Pietro to finally wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Thank you all for still reading this!  
> With this chapter, I am not entirely satisfied, as I am with the whole story. It's overall getting darker and angstier than anticipated...I didn't want it to get this way, originally, but well...
> 
> And in any case someone of you is as pissed off about Pietro's death as I am: may I recommend you my meta-stuff-story "Pietro Maximoff's death and other unnecessary things"?

_A blink. There's light. Another. It is darker. There might have been time between them, but it is – strange. A tiredness vibrates through every cell. Far away, there is a feeling of security, old and familiar: it is Wanda, and she's tired. Wounded, maybe, it feels like it. Oh. And staying awake would mean she'd wake up, sooner or later, so he just quietly slips back into – well, back before._

How many hours he sat next to the kid's sleeping place, Clint couldn't say, but he can't leave. Whenever he thinks that Wanda has got this covered, and even if it all failed, Dr Cho was just two and a half rooms away, she and her top team – Clint just couldn't go. His body was capable, he knew this, and during battles, his body had endured much worse and still had gone on.  
His mind refused to go. God, whenever he tried to get up, go to sleep in his bunk where it would be quiet and he could finally be alone – he couldn't do it.  
It would mean leaving Pietro, and the rare times he dozed away, he had flashes of dreams where he'd wake up to a smashed tank, the shards glistening with thick, congealing blood, as Pietro had tried to crawl out, and he'd lie there, in front of Clint, fingers buried in Clint's trousers as he tried to rasp out his awful trademark quip, but the words dying in his throat, only helpless noises rasping out. And then he was dead, again, and it was Clint's fault, all his, all over again.  
He'd jolt awake from that and sleep would elude him for hours afterwards, but it wasn't that serious yet, he was just a bit tired, and it all felt like a very long day, like the battle had happened a few hours ago, and it might have, even, it wasn't as if he could really know. His feeling on time was too shaky for him to fully trust right now.  
The only way he found even one speck of rest was when he sat next to the tank. It was all quiet, especially since Wanda's screaming and after that, Dr Cho had turned off all machines not ultimately necessary for the kid's survival, including all monitoring devices that could make any noise. Ever since, it was utterly silent in the room, and Clint could even hear Wanda's gentle breathing where she slept. The pain she had been in was wiped off of her face, and she looked at peace just as much as her brother did. No one knew what had happened, what had made her scream like that, but then she had suddenly stopped, only whispering her brother's name.  
Her brother who was in the tank, trying to resurrect, just because he died to protect Clint.  
And no matter how often he said sorry, the words were useless, because Pietro couldn't hear them, no matter how good or bad a state he was in at the moment – and because the words clunked together in Clint's mouth. They felt like hypocrisy, because it didn't matter what he said, it would never eradicate what had happened. The kid had died for him, willingly, had stepped in front of him and taken those bullets - - and Clint had joked about him. Had wanted to shoot him, claiming no one would miss him.  
It probably served Clint right he couldn't stop thinking about the kid – Pietro – dying. Like a scratched vinyl his mind was stuck on it, replaying the moments like a loop – the shots thundering, then the terrifying beat of silence, this tiny wet noise coming out of the kid's mouth, the fucking sentence, and then Pietro fell over. And the more often Clint replayed thinking of this, the more vivid it all became, the more awful it got. The shots got louder and louder, ringing in his ears so heavily he had tried taking out his hearing aids, but it just all made it worse. Like he tried to escape what he deserved anyways. And whenever he closed his eyes, blood splatters were painted on the insides of his lid, thick and red and drenching silver clothes and silver hair, and he saw the blue eyes again, although he prayed all the time he would never have to again. God. He'd seen them alive, mischief written in them clear as day, and then, the shots had taken this out of them. This, and so much more – how old was the kid anyways?  
While running, he hadn't even seemed that young, most likely because he and his sister had experienced their own share of cruelty and death and pain, ageing them beyond their biological years. - Time that had caught up with Pietro the moment he had died, wiping the tension off, the tightness that told of a life spent in pain and fear and anger, and miles and miles of stubbornness. All of this, gone, only leaving Pietro's age, leaving this young man and Clint -  
Clint had stood next to him, looking at him, and he couldn't believe it. During battle, the kid had seem all grown up, and all, but lying dead he was – god, how old was he? He looked younger, in the way Pietro Maximoff should have lived on for so much longer, hadn't lived long enough by far, having been ripped away too early. And all of this just for Clint. Just for someone who had already lived long enough; sometimes too long he felt like. It seemed like a millenium wrapped up in too many missions and too much pain and too many failures and too few successes, but here he was, alive and mostly unhurt, all because the kid had decided to jump in front of him.  
God, why, Clint couldn't understand it, and he just felt as if he didn't deserve it, not one inch of it. It should be him who died, it should have been him that had lied on Dr Cho's table, it should have been him who was reanimated and put into the tank – but then, would they really have done this? Or wouldn't they just have seen it like he did now: he wouldn't have deserved any of this, not like the kid did. Maybe Clint would have died instead of the kid, had the moment played out differently. Clint would have died, and unlike Pietro, he would have stayed dead; after all, he was just a human trying to play with the super humans and gods.  
It does not feel good knowing this, because it makes his life taste like ashes in his mouth, knowing he doesn't deserve his life at all – a mere old human's life for a younger super human's life feels like a bad trade, one of the worst imaginable.


End file.
